Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management
Volume 7, 2012
Introduction to the Special Section on
Game-based Learning: Design and Applications
Jelena Jovanovic
Faculty of Organizational
Sciences,
University of Belgrade, Serbia
Raymond Chiong
Faculty of Higher Education,
Swinburne University of
Technology, Victoria, Australia
[email protected]
[email protected]
Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is a very broad and increasingly mature research field. It
encompasses a variety of research topics, ranging from the study of different pedagogical approaches, teaching techniques, and strategies for online learning to the application of advanced
technologies in educational settings (e.g., different kinds of mobile devices, sensors, and sensor
networks that provide the technical foundation for context-aware, ubiquitous learning). One of the
areas in TEL is game-based learning. Researchers have found that educational and/or computerbased games have real potential as learning tools (Amory, 2001; Chiong, 2010; Gros, 2007;
Quinn, 2005; Squire, 2005). It has been shown, for example, that games can help players to improve their problem-solving and negotiation skills, narrative and communication skills, as well as
non-linear thinking patterns.
Game-based learning has already been successfully applied to both school and workplace settings
and its adoption is continually increasing. In addition, there has recently been some increasing
interest in “gamification” of education as a means to increase students’ motivation for learning.
Gamification refers to the use of game design elements, or the so-called game mechanics, in nongame contexts and applications with the aim of increasing users’ engagement with those applications (Deterding, Sicart, Nacke, O’Hara, & Dixon, 2011; Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011).
Game design elements are often very efficient in increasing motivation as they are grounded on
research results of positive psychology (McGonigal, 2011). Although the term was originally
coined with the focus of integrating social and/or reward aspects of games into software (Mangalindan, 2010), more recently its use has been extended to incorporating simulations as well.
This special section on “Game-based Learning: Design and Applications” provides a glimpse of
the design and applications of video and simulation games in teaching and learning. Three papers
related to the theme of game-based learning have been included. Each of these papers was comprehensively reviewed by two to three reviewers over two rounds of rigorous review cycles and
thoroughly checked by the editors.
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Editorial
In the first paper of the special section,
Life Skills Developed by Those Who
Have Played in Video Game Tournaments, Thirunarayanan and Vilchez reported on an empirical study that was
aimed at exploring whether the competitive nature of video game tournaments
affects the development of some important life skills, including cognitive
(memorization, decision making, and
Game-based Learning: Design and Applications
arithmetic skills) and social (leadership, communication, coordination of a group’s activities, and
team work) skills, as well as work performance. The study was based on a comparison of the effects that video games have on the aforementioned skills as perceived by the students who participated in video game tournaments and those who did not. The collected data demonstrated that
statistically significant proportions of the participants who had played in video game tournaments
reported positive influence of video game play on the development of their life skills, compared
to those who had not played in such tournaments. These findings indicate that the use of video
games tournaments could facilitate the acquisition of life skills, though the level of competitiveness in such tournaments should be adaptable to the characteristics of the given study group.
The second paper by Šimić, Constructive Simulation as a Collaborative Learning Tool in Education and Training of Crisis Staff, describes how a constructive simulation can be used to train
members of a local community to react properly in situations of natural and man-made disasters.
This paper has focused particularly on disasters caused by floods, and Šimić proposed a combined use of a constructive simulation system and a flood simulator to present as reliably as possible the dynamics of the rising water level and its effects on the surrounding environment. Simulations of this type require highly elaborated scenarios with well-defined roles and associated responsibilities for all the participants (i.e., learners and teachers). During the simulation, learners
face many challenging situations that have to be dealt with in limited time and restricted resources and acted upon in a coordinated and collaborative manner. Learning takes the form of an
iterative process through which learners gain skills required for performing evacuation and rescuing tasks. Through a case study of a flood in the South Morava region, Šimić reported on the details related to the set up and execution of such a constructive simulation and provided some evidence of its educational benefits.
In the last paper of this special section, Innovative Teaching Using Simulation and Virtual Environments, Barjis et al. discussed their experience in using simulations, game-based and virtual
environments to introduce some innovation in their own teaching practices in the broad domain of
systems engineering. The primary motive for introducing these novel technologies, combined
with appropriate pedagogical approaches, was to enable students to better perceive and comprehend the objects of their study, including the components, relations, and the underlying dynamics
of those objects, as well as to provide students with opportunities to interact with those objects
and related processes. Each of the co-authors reported on their own innovative approach that had
been based on either the use of one of the aforementioned technologies or a combination of them.
Besides the description of the applied approaches, both in terms of the applied pedagogy and
technology, Barjis et al. also provided some evidence of and their self-reflection on the pros and
cons of each approach. An important finding they derived from their experience is that the use of
novel virtual interactive tools/environments requires a clear distinction of the course topics that
could be supported by each particular tool, so that the position and role of a tool in the course curriculum could be clearly defined. To support educators in building such a curriculum, i.e., a curriculum that makes the best use of modern systems and tools for the attainment of the course objectives, an approach based on Causal Mapping has been presented in the paper.
To end, we would like to thank all the authors for their contributions to this special section. We
also wish to acknowledge the reviewers involved for their expertise and time, in particular those
who have provided constructive comments and suggestions. Finally, we hope the readers will enjoy reading the papers in this special section as much as we have enjoyed putting them together.
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Jovanovic & Chiong
References
Amory, A. (2001). Building an educational adventure game: Theory, design and lessons. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 129(2/3), 249-264.
Chiong, R. (2010). Programming with games. IEEE Learning Technology, 12(1), 14-16.
Deterding, S., Sicart, M., Nacke, L., O’Hara, K., & Dixon, D. (2011). Gamification: Using game-design
elements in non-gaming contexts. In CHI ’11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI EA '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 2425-2428.
Gros, B. (2007). Digital games in education: The design of games-based learning environments. Journal of
Research on Technology in Education, 40(1), 23-38.
Mangalindan, J. P. (2010). Play to win: The game-based economy. Fortune. Available at
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/09/03/the-game-based-economy/
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world.
New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Quinn, C.N. (2005). Engaging learning: Designing e-learning simulation games. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Squire, K. (2005). Game-based learning: Present and future state of the field. Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin-Madison Press.
Zichermann, G., & Cunningham, C. (2011). Gamification by design: Implementing game mechanics in web
and mobile apps. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
Biographies
Jelena Jovanovic is with the Faculty of Organizational Sciences,
University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has been lecturing in the areas of
intelligent systems and software engineering at both undergraduate and
postgraduate levels for a number of years now. She is also an active
researcher and a practitioner in the fields of intelligent systems and
educational technologies. Her primary research interests are in
semantic technologies, Web technologies, technology enhanced
learning and knowledge management. She is an Editor of the
Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and
Management. To date, she has more than 70 refereed publications in
books, journals and conference proceedings.
Raymond Chiong is with the Faculty of Higher Education Lilydale,
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He has been lecturing
in the areas of programming and information systems at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels for many years. Besides teaching, he
has been actively pursuing research in the areas of evolutionary game
theory and optimisation. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management, and an
Editor of the journal Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. He is also the Vice Chair of the task force “Education” of IEEE
Computational Intelligence Society’s Emergent Technology Technical
Committee, and one of the Founding Chairs of the IEEE Symposium
on Computational Intelligence in Production and Logistics Systems.
To date, he has more than 70 refereed publications in books, journals and conference proceedings.
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